Mad Tracks

''Mad Tracks'' is a 2006 racing video game developed by Load Inc. and originally released for Microsoft Windows, later being ported to the Xbox 360 as part of Xbox Live Arcade on May 30, 2007, and in February 2017 after becoming backwards compatible with Xbox One.

''Mad Tracks'' was a commercial and critical success, being praised by critics and journalists for its multiplayer elements.

In February 2019, it was announced that the game was delisted from Xbox Live Arcade because of a change in publishing rights from D3 Publisher to Plug In Digital. The latter released a reworked high-definition (HD) version of the game on Steam on March 10, 2020.

Gameplay

''Mad Tracks'' is a 3D racing game, featuring both a single-player mode and a multiplayer mode. In the game, there are 46 courses in total, divided into races and minigames. The courses are set in 10 different locations including kitchens, bistros, and a table football set.

In single-player, the player's objective is to achieve gold trophies by completing objectives, such as driving around a track or landing cars on a dartboard. The online and multiplayer modes are similar to the single-player mode and include the same objectives, albeit they allow up to 4 players to play simultaneously.

Inspired by Darda's toy cars, the cars in ''Mad Tracks'' feature spring-powered batteries. The longer the player accelerates, the weaker the spring becomes, leading to the battery eventually running out. The player can regenerate power by letting go of the acceleration button; the spring immediately recharges. It will also recharge when it's airborne and even faster when it's driven backwards. The amount of usage of a spring will also depends on which type of a car is played.

Development

The game was announced by Load Inc. in 2003, tentatively titled '' Darda'', following a few months of testing gameplay issues. For the rest of 2003 and early 2004, the game was tested in a playable and non-playable demos. In March 2004, a prototype of the game was shown off at Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, and was slated to be released for Microsoft Windows computers and the PlayStation 2.

After a demo of the game was showcased at E3 in May 2004, the studio began to search for a publisher. It was also announced that the game would be released on PlayStation Portable, and that its release was planned for the second quarter of 2005. In November, Load Inc. signed a contract with Micro Application to publish the game. Its premiere was moved to the third half of 2005, with the exact date left unknown.

The game was showcased at E3 in May 2005, with an Xbox version also being announced after being mentioned in March, and its premiere were slated for September 2005.

A release date was later moved to February 17, 2006, after releasing a public demo in January 10. On January 13, the game's official website was launched, with a German version following suit in November 2005. The PlayStation 2 version was later confirmed to be cancelled, since the console was becoming an increasingly less viable option, when studio had searched a target platform for translation.

Load Inc.'s development director Denis Bourdainin had later revealed that the game was originally a licensed game based on the Darda toy cars, but the game was reworked and retitled to ''Mad Tracks'' after the studio's failure to secure the right to use the brand.

Xbox Live Arcade

On April 12, 2006, it was announced that ''Mad Tracks'' would release for Xbox Live Arcade in June, which would cost around 1,000 Microsoft Points. Later delayed to October and in August 10 slated for the following year, due to combination of time and technical difficulties, with online multiplayer support, in addition to the code been rewritten from the ground up to be runable on Xbox Live Arcade.

A month later in November, Denis Bourdainin had stated that the game would cost 800 Microsoft Points (€9.30), alongside two expansion packs each costing 400 Microsoft Points (€4.65). Concerning the rise of a price in comparison to the PC counterpart, Denis had promised that the Xbox 360 version would be superior to the PC version. Alongside Xbox Live support, the console translation's long development time also enabled improvements to game mechanics and graphics to be made.

In May 2007, D3 Publisher of America, Inc. had announced that the game would be ported to Xbox 360 alongside '' RocketBowl'' (2004) and '' Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords'' (2007), though the port's release date was unknown. In May 15–17 of the same year, the game was greenlighted after being verified and certified by Microsoft Game Studios. It was also confirmed that the game would cost 800 Microsoft points ($10), but according to Denis Bourdain the release date was at a time unknown. Around May 28–29, it was announced that game would arrive on the Xbox Live Arcade on May 30.

Release

''Mad Tracks'' was released for Microsoft Windows in France on February 17, 2006, and published by Micro Application. Along with a completed demo of the game was released on January 10, featuring three courses. Later that same month, the game was released in German and published by Frogstar Interactive. This was done alongside a patch update—version 1.1. This update fixed bugs, improved performance, online, graphic cards and controller support. The game's file size weight was dropped from 55 to 29 megabytes. Another patch update, version 1.2, was released on April 20, and improved online multiplayer support, fixed a problem with the game's level of detail for 2D mipmap rendering, added matchmaking and support for non-western keyboards. In June the game was published by Akella and released in Russia. In July, the game was released as a Digital distribution, with its publisher being Element5. That same year, in Poland the game was released and published by Nicolas Games.

The Xbox 360 version was released on Xbox Live Arcade and published by D3 Publisher on May 30, 2007. In July 12, a patch for the Xbox version was released that fixed a bug which prevented progress in the game that affected some players, who couldn't purchase the full game after first downloading its demo. This was earlier discovered in June by the reports in the Xbox forums, shortly after its initial launch of the port. Two downloadable content packs for the Xbox 360 version of ''Mad Tracks'' were produced, each costing 350 Microsoft Points ($4.37) and adding 15 challenges in total. The first was "Bravo", and was released on July 25, 2007, alongside an extra theme "Crazy Cars" for 150 Microsoft Points. The second was "Encore", which released on June 27, 2007. Each of these content packs added 9 races and 6 minigames.

A port for the Wii was released in the third quarter of 2009 in Europe, and was published by Neko Entertainment and Bigben Interactive, following its announcement in February earlier that year. A mobile version of the game for iOS was published by Namco Bandai and released on December 15, 2011. An Android version was released on February 15, 2012. In February 2017, the game become backwards compatible with Xbox One.

In February 2019, it was reported that the game was delisted from Xbox Live Arcade following a change in publishing rights from D3 Publisher to Plug In Digital, who would later be handling the new release for Steam. While the Steam version's release date was slated for "early 2020", the page for the game on IndieDB specified that it would and was release on March 10 as a HD version.

Reception

Jonathan Miller, writing for ''IGN'', described ''Mad Tracks'' as "a decent racing romp, but you better bring your friends." He awarded the game a score of 6.8/10.

Keith Durocher of ''WorthPlaying'' gave a score of 8.9/10 to the PC version, describing the game as "a tiny little blast of fun that sets out to do nothing more than entertain for awhile and it succeeds." He also added that he had "seen much worse offerings from much bigger and better funded teams than Load, Inc." and positively compared the game to Nintendo's ''Mario Kart'' series.

iPhone app review aggregator ''appsafari.com'' gave the game a score of 4.5 out of 5 saying; "While there is the one small problem with the controls, this app is very fun and works very well. If you are interested in racing and blowing up other cars, you will certainly get some fun out of this."

Peter Willington of the video game website ''Pocket Gamer'' gave a score of 3 out of 5, criticizing the grinding in order to progress such as making Championship mode and AI repetitive, but praised game's overall variety of content, multiplayer and controls, despite being underwhelmed with lacklustre visual effects, graphics, audio and items aspect. Ultimately, he wrote that "it's not a bad looking game, the frame rate holds steady for the most part, the car models feel chunky though not distinctive, the tracks wind and loop through the detailed environments."

Sales

''Mad Tracks'' was a commercial success. In January 2007, Load Inc. had reported that the game was digitally downloaded 100,000 times on PC. Later that same year in December, it was reported that the game had sold over 1.8 million units, and its demo since its release was downloaded 1.2 million times and on Xbox Live Arcade over 630,000 users, six months after the Xbox 360 version's release. In June 2008, ''Engadget'' reported that the Xbox 360 version's demo was played 700,000 times and had sold 72,000 units.

Awards

On September 21, 2007, Xbox 360 version of ''Mad tracks'' was nominated for Best Home Console Game, during Video Game Festival Award 2007 at Paris in France.

See also

*''Re-Volt''
*'' Things on Wheels''

Notes

References

External links

*
Mad Tracks
' at MobyGames
* (French)
* (German)
* {{official website, https://web.archive.org/web/20060303013136/http://www.easycomputing.com/action/madtracks/ (Benelux)

2006 video games
Android (operating system) games
D3 Publisher games
IOS games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Neko Entertainment games
Products and services discontinued in 2019
Racing video games
Video games developed in France
Wii games
Windows games
Xbox 360 Live Arcade games